10-4-2021 Williamstown, KY

As for Kentucky, the people here talk funny.  If you say, “Hi, how are you?” they don’t say, “Hi, I’m fine.”  They say, “Hah, ahm fahn, bless y’all fer askin.’  Y’all have a good dye!”  Also, it rains a pantload here, what’s up with that?  The humidity is 76%.  It rained all day and night.  Ugh.  I need some warm and dry.

 

Walnut grove at 3 Rivers RV Park

They build BIG maple trees in KY!

We are actually parked at Three Rivers Campground in Corinth, not Williamstown.  It’s a strange, funky little park with skinny little pads.  The tires almost hang off the pads.  But there are a lot of trees and grass and three streams flow through the park.  There’s so much shade that I’m guessing that nothing ever really dries out.  How do people live in all this wet, mud and cold?  The road to get here through the thick trees was so narrow that they have advisory hours for arrival and departure so that two vehicles going opposite directions don’t encounter each other because there would be no way out.  Well, we’ll see tomorrow morning how that one plays out.

 

Our first view of the ark

As for Williamstown:  It was our intention to camp there but we couldn’t find a place so we wound up in Corinth, not so far away.  On the bucket list was to spend a day in Williamstown at Noah’s Ark (The Ark Encounter as seen on TV).  We had tickets purchased online long ago and we made it!  There are remote parking lots and shuttles and during high season, I would think it is as crowded as Disneyland but now it wasn’t bad at all.

 

The first thing that happens when the ark comes into view is you gasp and say, “Oh My God!”  It is enormous and in your face.  The ark is longer than the Badger that we rode across Lake Michigan by 100 feet and wider at the beam by 26 feet.  The Badger is taller by 50 feet, though, probably because the ark can’t carry as many cars and trucks. 

Thar she blows, Rob!

Rob at the stern

Lindy at the bow

The ramp on the right was,
in theory, how the animals
got on the ark.

 

The guy who initiated the ark project, Ken Ham, started out as a high school science teacher but then he got God and became a minister.  He got so into it that he began to do quite a bit of Bible-thumping and became enthused about the Old Testament, creation vs. evolution and of course the old stories about Noah and the ark.  He and other researchers say there is evidence that Adam and Eve were created 6,000 years ago.  The Noah thing happened in 4,400 BC.  They say that Noah’s Grampa lived to be 900 years old.  When Noah turned 600, God asked him to build the ark.  God was sick and tired of all the sinning that was going on among the 145M people on the Earth at the time and He decided to trash the whole works with a flood and start over.  God told Noah he should make the ark 300 cubits X 50 cubits X 30 cubits.  Researchers say that the cubit was the average distance from the elbow to the longest fingertip, or 17.4 inches.  A “Royal cubit” was ~20.4 inches.  This ark, constructed using Royal cubits, is 510 ft. long X 85 ft. across the beam and 51 feet tall.  It took Noah 75 years to build the ark, then God told him to gather up the fam and get on board.  You may wonder about the animals and how Noah rounded them all up.  Turns out God handled that part.  The animals showed up, many of them in pairs, a male and a female, but there were more of some species.  Also God apparently decided they didn’t need to take bugs but they did take some, like butterflies and moths.  I have my own questions about some of this:  For example, did they eat the cows?  Ribeyes, don’tchaknow.  And did they eat the two chickens or keep them to lay eggs for omelets?  If the egg theory holds, then they obviously had to do the pigs in for the bacon.  In this case, Noah probably loaded up on a lot more pigs.  I mean, it makes sense, right?  (Although I looked at the prints and there wasn’t a smokehouse on the ark.  What were they thinking?!)  Did the birds eat the butterflies and the other bugs?

Fresh water supply

Rob at the centerline up at the bow 

On the right are the insect pots
covered with burlap

Inside the cage of one of the
animals, now extinct

We KNOW why they carried deer!  
Venison on the hoof!  They weren't
stupid!  After all, they knew what
cubits were!

Centerline of the ship looking up

Up at the bow

Bacon on the hoof!

 

The seed for this ark was planted in 2004.  Engineering firms, artists, architects and money guys worked on the plans.  Finally, in 2014, construction began;  the Amish, with their spectacular woodworking talents, played a very big part in the effort, since the structure is 100% wood.  The Final cost was $100M not one penny of which came from the government or the taxpayer. They opened the doors to the public 7-7-2016, significant because 7:7 was some passage in the Bible.

 

The ark is quite an engineering feat and work of art.  It is as authentic as can be expected based upon a limited supply of technical data.  Some artistic license fills in the details, such as the care and feeding of the animals and where the human living quarters were situated.  There are three decks and we spent 4 ½ hours walking down and back on each deck to study the displays.  In the late afternoon, we emerged to a raging squall.  Very handy to have an ark nearby!  In time, the sun broke through between the clouds and a bright double rainbow appeared.  A rainbow at the ark!  Eerily familiar!  A rainbow appeared when Noah finally docked on Mt. Ararat, God’s symbol of the promise never to do that flooding thing again.  (Other methods were not discussed by Noah and God, as far as I know.)

The ark and the rainbow!